The Reasons
by Marijke08
Summary: The mythographers lied.
1. The Joys of Family

**Chapter One- The Joys of Family**

Her brown sun-kissed arms tighten around me in an easy embrace, and I sink into her like a stone in a vast lake, my head curled into her neck. So neat, so tight, so close I can feel the solid beat of her heart as deeply rooted as the pillars of the earth to her chest. I am whole, yet I am torn.

"_Proserpine, _be wary of the mortals. They will hurt you if they find you."

I close my eyes, yet Helios light is brilliant still to me. Her wild brown hair is thick against my face, the soft warmth of her robes encircling me.

"_Proserpine, _be wary of the Gods. They will hurt you if they find you."

The scent of summer lilies, fresh from a bubbling stream in some foreign land I battle to imagine in my mind wafts over me. I can almost hear the gurgle of water along its course as she whispers in my ear once more.

"_Proserpine, _most of all, be wary of the greatest evil. Men. They will hurt you if they find you."

Gods, Mortals, Men, Mountains, Air, Water, Animals, Love, Sorrow, Flowers, Rain, Horses, Music, Life, Love, Loss. Proserpine, Proserpine, so many warnings, so many. So many warnings until I could scream to the heavens louder than a titan that all I want is Freedom.

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The ground above gives an imperceptible tremor but to those who feel the earths pain as it's stretched wide. A moment later a distant _thud_ drives through the ground and a ribbon of dust drifts down from the palace roof. Never before has this pressure been placed upon my citadel. As King of the Underworld, a certain foresight of trouble is a part of the job description, but no foresight is needed where the giants are concerned. A second _thud_. I'm up and moving this time. Damm Zeus and his over-confidence. He's cocky. King of the Gods above, the fates could have chosen a being with more intelligence than algae that grows on the verge of Tartarus to lead us.

I'm just out of the entrance when it comes- the earth _roars _and the temperature soars to all new highs as the entire vast cavern vibrates violently. It's going to shake itself apart, opening the underworld to the Upper world. The Asphodel Fields laid bear to the universe? Not on my watch. The stallions are pawing the ground, feeling the raw tension that threatens to shatter the air when I arrive. The calm briefly under my hands enough to tighten the harness. When we plunge up through the soil above Tartarus between a fault, the brilliant light of the upper world blinds me- but not as much as the dense ash wafting from Mount Ætna. If the ground is groaning, the sky is _screaming _as the titans knock the volcano apart, leaving no room for its chamber of magma. And when the magma runs out, when they can really throw their weight about down there, my kingdom will be laid open for all the world to see.

Where is Zeus? I think for a second, looking down at the township being buried under a hot flow of ash. Balance, the upper world is his domain, not mine. Balance is not my responsibility. No more time to think- through the thick grey ash a solid jet of magma is soaring into the darkened sky. I plunge towards the high cone and dive into an empty tube leading to the heart of the volcano. Horse and fire- never a good combination. I strike through the fertile soil down to the bowels of the earth to avoid the liquid fire the hides there. Inside this muted place the enraged bellows of Briareus are deafening. And then it comes- the all consuming _groan _of the exhausted earth as it gives up its fight and slowly tears open juddering and screaming in pain. Only one more thing to do. My chariot dives even deeper into the earth until I am below the imprisoned giants.

I strike the earth once with my trident. Twice. On the third strike the earth and everything below it falls away to darkness.

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"What _is _he doing this time?"

Hera's sweet voice turned as hard as steel at the word _he_. Not that I blame her. It can't be easy, being the goddess of marriage and having a philandering husband but being unable to try for divorce.

"Who knows. Take my advice and don't try and find out. It'll be good for your mental health."

And everybody else's, I added to myself. Any more hysterical Hera and I'll scream. I am after all the goddess of Love… I'm out of the picture when love fades. I know very well that Zeus is turning his roving eye where it shouldn't turn. Hera pauses beside me and I put a hand on her shoulder. Hera is one of those women who it is easy to love… and even easier to want to shake until her teeth rattle. I mean, who else would go out of her way to marry the one god who has become a pincushion of my little cupid's arrows, and then cry inconsolably every single time she realizes he's been unfaithful?

I pick up the glass of nectar beside me and take a sip as Hera vanishes back over the citadel of clouds to her sons chambers, no doubt. I turn my attention back to Zeus. Who has captured the God of Gods attention this time? Cupid scrambles onto my lap and I hug him to me, cradling his chubby young face in my hands. I could see Demeter out of the corner of my eye, her long auburn hair draped over her large plump frame having an enraged conversation with Ares. Three guesses what that's about.

"…and I said No! You are not to approach her, do you here me? She is not available for marriage-"

Demeter's voice floated over. I could see Hermes watching this discussion just as closely as I was. Athena, carefully reading through some scrolls was also listening keenly, though pretending not to. She's probably pleased. I flexed me fingers slightly in agitation. Poor child of Demeter, so well guarded she wasn't even allowed to live. Something needs to be done for young Persephone. Already Athena and Artemis defy my power with their chasity, and because of this over protective mother hen Kore looks to follow the same path. None of us even noticed him until his voice cut through the air like distant thunder.

"Zeus, tell me there is a good reason why you let the earth be shaken apart by the giants Typhon, Briareus, Enceladus. Tell me there is a good reason why you, preserver of the balance were idle."

Hades is always rather dark, but right now he looks deeper then Uranus at its height. Zeus spun with the expression of a guilty child on his face. The contrasts between the two brothers are as stark as the similarities. Both are tall and well built, but where Zeus is light, boyish and not the sharpest tack in the box Hades is, well, polar opposite. Dark man, Intense, intelligent and inexonerable. For all of this, I've never been particularly taken with the guy. And his kingdom… shudder.

"Hades. Long time no see!" Zeus scrutinized him for a moment. "You need to get out in the sun more, brother."

Even I winced at that. Try just a little tact there Zeus, just a little… Hades just looked at his brother, his expression completely bare, but a sort of white hot rage building up in the air. Everybody had paused to watch this exchange now.

"We are not all as privileged as you, _all seeing one_," he said quietly, but perfectly audibly, "To be able to ignore the tearing of the earth, the screams of your subjects and have the Asphodel Fields almost laid bare to the universe. Where were you with your lightning bolts? It was your idea to imprison the giants in Mount Aetna- now they are imprisioned in the deepest vaults of Tartarus beside the Titans as they should have been long ago. Why, why weren't you there brother?"

I dipped my head. I had seen too much of the blood staining his robe, the burns, the exhaustion clinging to him. A man destined to a life of constant work in darkness with no thanks and no joy so that his brother could live in paradise and philander. For the first time, I felt a deep shame of my father. The light seemed some how repelled to the marble pallor of his skin and I, the closest to him, heard his sigh when Zeus could make no answer to his question.

"I can see that one does not need to be 'all seeing' to see all things," he mutters starkly, and a moment later he is gone. The mood rockets perceptivly. _Now _I remember why we're all so pleased to see him go- he's damn depressing. Demeter just shakes her head, the argument with Aries apparently dissolved and walks away, probably to join her sister in the nursery. Cupid is playing with a lock of my long pink hair when suddenly my mind puts one and one together. And oh so perfect is the combination.

"Aphrodite, take that smile off your face. I know you're plotting something-" Hermes swings his son up easily in his arms. I smiled back. Radiance exploding in my chest as the thought sunk in. "How could you think such of me?" I demanded indignantly, but my mind is already turning over the finer points of a plan.


	2. The Mortal Goddess

**Chapter 2; The Mortal Goddess**

The moonlight feels beautiful on my skin as I lie between the Oceanids, the soft relaxed breathing lulling me slowly asleep with the rustle to Flavia trees moving softly in the gently balmy breeze. A soft whistle through the air and I open my eyes. Hermes is in the space between the trees, his shoes fluttering slightly, his white face thrown into high relief in the moonlight. Carefully so not to wake the Nymphs surrounding me I clamber over the boulder to meet him. I cant conceal a grin.

"I was wondering when I'd see you again, Hermes."

His smile was as wickedly mischievous as mine was passive. "Never wonder, Miss Captive. I'm everywhere and anywhere."

There was the sound of a cracking branch and Hermes jumped as though he'd been dropped in icy water. I stifled a laugh. "Mothers not here. Relax."

And he relaxed… slightly. I can't really blame him- Mother had tackled him trying to steal his magical shoes when she found us walking in the fields together last moon. Mother is like that. I call it over protective. Hermes calls it insanity. He held out his arm and I took it with a smile.

"What's happening in the world Hermes? I want to know _everything_."

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"Face it- you're depressed."

I looked up at the woman- if you could call her that- standing defiantly over me, wrapped into the form of an ancient priestess. Bent and crippled in huge robes, her face was so contorted and deep with wrinkles she looked anything but human. I rubbed my forehead. If it were possible for Gods to have headaches, I would be in trouble right now.

"What makes you think that?"

It pays to be polite to the Erinyes- they are far too useful to insult. But right now I really cannot be bothered engaging in conversation with Alecto. Sadly, it's not for nothing she's known as the 'unceasing'.

"Usually you're just miserable and dejected… now you're miserable and depressed. There's a notable difference."

This is worse then speaking to my whimsical brethren.

"Truly. Do enlighten me." I couldn't hide my sarcasm as I looked out across my kingdom to the Plain of Judgement. Shades are lingering on the flat plateau, stomped flat after centuries of the weightless dead, resilient grey flaxes growing alongside.

"Just look at you! Usually you're out there pushing souls into the pit or into the meadows. Now, you're just sitting here brooding moodily."

I opened my mouth to reply that I was not 'brooding moodily', and if I was, I had every right to do so, but she was all ready speaking again.

"If you don't get out there and fulfill your job description the Asphodel Fields are going to spill over into the marshlands. Charon already says that there's difficulty fitting shades on the northern plain."

I glanced back at her. "Liar. Charon said no such thing. There is plenty of room."

Anybody else would have been chagrinned to have been caught in such a direct lie, but Alecto just took it in her stride.

"That's the spirit. You know what you need? Inspiration." I just rolled my eyes at that. I knew well Alecto's idea of inspiration- it usually involved much mortal bloodshed. I'm still clearing up her last mess in Italy.

"Truly?" I said, my mind still vaguely distracted. There hadent been a tremor in the earth all day- but would the depths of Tartarus, guarded by the hundred-handed be enough to control the giants _and _the titans?

"What you need, Lord Master of Darkness, is a woman."

I swear, I dropped my trident.

"Excuse me?" She didn't just say what I thought she said. She wouldn't be fool enough.

"You need a woman. This place has long yearned for a queen." Any other person, and I'd push them straight into Tartarus for saying such a thing.

"Alecto, has it occurred to you that you're probably not the best being to act as a judge of character, let alone suggest something like _that_?!"

She just shrugged, a more then slightly twisted smiled on her lips, so deeply creased with wrinkles it was almost lost. And then she was gone, fading into the gloom that hung around like a permanent mist. I instantly tried to dismiss her words but they caught in my mind. Was that it? Was that what this depressing hole inside me was that kept getting bigger and bigger and robbed me of purpose is? At that moment Sonja appeared at the door, a pitcher of water on a tray.

"My lord?" She asked politely and I nodded to admit her. She put it on the table beside me, and just as well because she would have dropped it.

"Sonja… does the Underworld need a Queen?" I asked, more absently then meaningfully, which is why I almost jumped at her excited, high pitched squeak of "Yes!" and then rapid "you've-finally-seen-the-light-I-thought-it-would-never-happen-" She instantly stopped at my look of horrified disbelief. In the seven years that Sonja and her lover Andrseus had served at the palace she'd hardly ever spoken a word.

As she left I considered Alecto's words. To have companionship in this eternal darkness… but who? The golden haired Olympians have no interest in me, and I less in them, dull creatures who pacify themselves causing minute troubles for mortals, creatures of light. But if not one of them, who?

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I admit, I've never really been particularly fond of the Underworld, even just the entrance to it. But necessity calls, so I force myself to stroll lightly towards the banks of the Styx. Looking at the murky, silty depths that make it seem more like sludge than water I can understand why Styx is the god of Hate. I don't have to wait long.

The air contorts before me, expands, and becomes three hunched figures, crippled with age and yet completely devoid of compassion. Theirs are ways of selfish death, desire and joy in the ending of life. I pulled back the deep hood I hid behind, not wanting to alert the attention of Hades little minion, Charon. I pulled out of my pocket a small olive plant, its colours seeming to dissolve into the gloomy air surrounding it.

"Sisters, Fates, I come with peaceful intentions-" "-desiring news of your 'beloved' sister, Proserpine." The smallest, hunched almost in half finished, reading my mind. She looked up at me and I felt a shudder pass down my spine at her dourly leathery face and her single, sightless eye. "We know."

I swallowed, burying my disgust hopefully too deep for them to sense. "I hoped you did. Could you… tell me of her future?" I asked and the oldest one laughed, and it felt like metal grating against my teeth. I flinched slightly. "We're not allowed to reveal the future," she said smugly, but the meaning behind her words was clear- 'what's in it for us?' I smiled, and laid on as much charm as I could.

"On earth and on Mount Olympus your work is so often underestimated and unappreciated. Wouldn't it be… refreshing… to have a god listen to you, and transverse your greatness to the other gods and unto earth, your full powers appreciated. You monitor life… why not influence it more than death?" There was a moment silence. I held my breath. Then they spoke, as one.

"In one months time, at the rising of the Vernal Moon, Kore, the daughter of mighty Zeus and bountiful Demeter will fall from the upper plains down to Asphodel and face judgment as a mortal. Her life-thread is already pulled tight, and the shears sharpened. She is not invulnerable to us."

Never in a thousand years had I anticipated _this. _I was expecting that she would become another virgin goddess or eventually succeed her bitter mother. "What do you mean, _die_? But she's a Goddess!" Their grin was gleeful; their laugh lilting.

"But she has no place among the gods," one said. "We have Artemis and Athena as chaste goddesses," "And we have Demeter as a goddess of agriculture." Oh poor child, how your blessed life hangs.

"May I hazard to point out that we have Apollo as a sun God and Hephaistos as a fire God- Fire and the Sun are similar but you haven't taken either of them!" The sisters looked at each other. Then the truth came out. "We wished to end the life of an infant boy but as we sought to, Demeter cast a new destiny to him, making him immortal."

I could have laughed. Who would have thought that interfering, over protective Demeter was the instrument of her own demise? "So you wish to steal from her the one thing closest to her heart," I thought out loud. "Well, that's fair enough if retribution is what you desire. But take into account that Persephone is an innocent young woman who is as strangled by her mothers protectiveness as your plans are. If I could offer a method even more effective then Persephone's death to earn the enmity of Demeter _and _preserve the maidens life, would you be interested?"

The middle one lifted her head for the first time, and a long snake slithered through the space where her eyes should be. "Greater enmity than her darling daughters death? You are in the wrong profession, Venus of Love."

I smiled slightly. "My business is with love, yours with hate. Have you ever noticed that the line dividing the two is fickle, and too easily broken?"

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I was still smiling in the early morning as the dew began to settle on the rich lush foliage, and the delicate petals of beautiful flowers began to unfold. And then suddenly I was running, as fast as the wind, as free as the waters, down the valley, faster and faster until I felt sure I could take my feet off the ground and soar into the cool morning air and achieve liberation- to see the world beyond this valley. To see life, to feel it, to _taste _it.

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"If you come into my kingdom, have the grace to show your face, not sulk in deception."

His voice was cold behind me, like shadows concentrated into a tone. I turned and drew down the hood of my cloak. My pink hair seemed to glow in this dark morbid place. Even the river behind the Lord of Darkness ran so thick with silt it was imperceptible just how deep it truly was or what lurked inside it. Hades, if it were possible with his face like carved stone, looked amused.

"Aphrodite. What a pleasant… surprise." I looked around and shivered. "Some improvements to the décor would do wonders, Dis." He nodded slightly. "As I tell your eternal father every time he visits, which is less regularly than you, if he so wishes to make changes, he is more than free." This was certainly sarcasm. Zeus would no more make changes to this situation which works so well for him than he would allow mortals to use his thunderbolts as play toys.

He led me across the long flat plain of Asphodel, shades separating for him like ghostly specters. Under his feet were equally ghostly plants what sprouted small star shaped flowers, all that grew in the earth that was somehow trampled as hard as stone. His massive palace in the massive cavern rivaled Olympus on scale.

Seated in his empty thrown room, overlooking his kingdom, though every nerve in my body screamed for sunlight and warmth I have to admit that the Underworld is impressive. The roof of the cavern sparkles with precious jewels as though with stars, shining light on the long grey land and the greyer shades.

"I have a proposition."

Hades still seemed vaguely amused. "It must be of vast interest to you, for you to travel into a place almost all fight to avoid." And I could understand exactly why, I thought as I looked over the dull plain.

Into the air I drew an image, clear as life. Hades leant forward to see, his large powerful frame relaxed with the wary grace of a warrior that his brother had never obtained. In the air hovered a window to where Persephone now lay, asleep on the golden grass, sunlight streaming over her. Her hair was every shade and hue of the harvest from auburn autumn to pure spun gold. Her rich lips were smiling in the simple radiant love of sunshine. Her robes clung to her, displaying her lithe, slender frame so different from her mothers, and her long graceful hands were clasped to pine martin now coiled comfortably on her stomach.

"This is the Goddess Persephone, who is destined to death on the next full moon."

Hades looked at the sleeping maiden in surprise. So much rich vivacious life seemed locked in her frame. Even through this image he felt as though he was drinking like a starved man the light of spring she radiated.

"She is a Goddess- the fates would not take such a one."

Aphrodite shrugged lightly. "Seems Demeter annoyed too many people in the wrong places. The fates are in want of retribution. She cannot be a Goddess because she has no purpose. We already have an agriculture goddess, and two goddesses of chastity. She's expendable."

I looked at his face, eyes transfixed by the image. I had him snared already.

"Shame. She's entirely innocent. That interfering mother of hers will scarcely let her breathe, let alone live. She is imprisoned by Demeter up in a valley named Enna. Smart girl though. She's got spirit. Wants freedom most of all as far as I can tell," I said lightly. Suddenly he looked up at me suspiciously.

"What mischief have you come to work, Venus?"

I put on a wounded expression. "What gives you that impression, m'lord? I'm just here with an idea. See, Persephone will die because she has no unique position, no reason. _You_ on the other hand live in darkness, ignored by your family, cleaning up your brother's messes with little thanks and no joy. Oh, and you just happen to have a space available in the works. Seems to me that what the King of the Underworld is lacking just happens to be a Queen. What a coincidence."

He looked back at the image. There had to be more than mere coincidence that brought this woman to him at a point when he was considering this very option. This girl _was _very beautiful, and if I can save such beauty from death, all the better.

"If she is to face such a fate, why does Zeus not intercede?" he demanded. I shrugged and my glowing hair bobbed slightly, its perfect curls bouncing. "If Zeus doesn't care that your kingdom was very nearly laid open, do you believe that he cares for his daughter in the slightest? Personally, my moneys on _him _trying to corrupt her sooner or later."

Hades had to admit, she had a point. He looked at the image once more. _Persephone_, he thought. _A beautiful name. A name fit for a Queen_.


End file.
